Journey into the Mind of Watts

The essay "Journey into the Mind of Watts" by Pynchon reveals another side to his writing. In painstaking detail, he describes the life and struggles of someone living in East Los Angeles and the racism that surrounds daily life in the neighborhood of Watts. He details the frustration of being black in the 1960's in this area, and pulls at the reader's ability to empathize with mistreated citizens. The horrific story of a white cop murdering a black man the day his wife was to give birth to his child, with no repercussions to speak of was a rhetorical device used by Pynchon to grasp the attention and the concern of his readers. I thought that this essay was a direct argument against the racist views in Los Angeles and their police department.
In contrast, Pynchon's fictional writing in The Crying of Lot 49 was much more difficult to unravel what the argument was that he was making in the novel. I think that this novel was left to the interpretation of the reader, and the essay about Watts was a direct stab at debating the issue of racism against blacks in East Los Angeles. It is interesting to see that Pynchon could have such diverse writing styles in these two pieces. I think that they are both effective in arguing their points, but in completely different ways.